


The Genesis Job

by somewhereelse



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8521222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereelse/pseuds/somewhereelse
Summary: AU. Let's go steal a show premise. The Arrow gang wanders into Leverage Consulting & Associates.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts on character beats:
> 
> Oliver/Eliot (hitter): skilled in various weapons; increasingly absurd fight training; doesn't sleep; (not so) secret man pain; crashed and burnt childhood sweetheart; master chef; paranoid enough to grow his own herbs, culinary and medicinal; (former) womanizer; hair is never the most attractive length; pretends to be pop culture oblivious  
> Felicity/Hardison (hacker): computers; prodigy; rambles; requires translation to be understood; waits for love interest to be ready (/want pretzels); nerd hot; actually hot; north star is exemplary female role model; hacker nemesis; walking, talking pop culture reference  
> Dig/Nate (mastermind): dead relative due to system that let them down; vendetta; sparks with ex-wife; voice of reason for misguided idiots; former good guy, now morally gray; too hard on himself  
> Thea/Sophie (grifter): ice queen; secretly royalty; don't fuck with her (adopted) family; will cut a bitch; likes shiny things; master improvisor  
> Roy/Parker (thief): probably orphaned; screwed up childhood; hoodies; parkour baby; emotionally stunted; OCD re money; enjoys needling other team members; can't be let loose in society

“Damn it, Roy!”

Thea winced at the low growl emanating from her brother and in the general direction of her boyfriend. The curse wasn’t an uncommon one—Felicity had joked about copyrighting it—but the tone of voice suggested more than the usual annoyance.

Predictably, Roy dove for Felicity, the only surefire obstacle to Oliver on a rampage. “Um, no, you are not using me as a literal shield. Get out from under my chair, Roy.” The young man sheepishly climbed to his feet then scrambled around to the other side of her desk.

“Hey! No maiming in my apartment,” Dig called out from the kitchen. A second later, he emerged with a Mason jar of something so vividly green that Felicity and Thea recoiled in disgust. “Oliver, what in the hell is this? I swear if your answer is magic island herbs—”

“Magic island herbs,” Oliver parroted in a deadpan voice. “What? Unless someone wants to charter a flight to Lian Yu, this is the only way I can regrow them. It’s a very distinctive growth environment.”

Dig walked over to deposit the jar in a grouchy Oliver’s waiting hands. “I mean it. After this job, no more using my apartment as base. We have enough resources to get a real setup.”

Every time they completed a job taking down a one-percenter, Felicity would skim a little off the top of what they returned to the government, though never dipping into what was needed to repay the victims. It wasn’t how Oliver operated in Russia and Hong Kong, but the team had essentially turned into a full time job, and Dig, Roy, and Felicity deserved roofs over their heads and food in their stomachs. Plus, they needed the cash to keep operations going since Moira was still holding tight to the pursestrings on his and Thea’s trusts. 

“Last time we had a real setup, Dig, I had to hit the self-destruct button and blow the place up because Malcolm Merlyn was about to expose us. I still can’t believe you let all those people drink and dance on top of all that C4 for so long,” she directed the last comment to Oliver who shrugged carelessly. “I am not letting that happen to my babies again.”

“I’m not your baby,” Roy absentmindedly protested, still recalling the heat on his back from the planned, yet untimely, explosion that had leveled Verdant and shaken a city block. Luckily, the police had chalked it up to a gas main explosion, triggered by Malcolm’s earthquake machine, and hadn’t looked any further. Insurance had paid out so the only real loss was the home they’d been building in the basement of Verdant.

Thea sighed at her clueless boyfriend. “She was definitely talking about her computers, not us.”

“Besides this is easier. You have a nice big kitchen for Oliver to cook us meals and enough beds and couches for when we’re tired. Plus, everyone knows you and Oliver are buds now so it’s normal that he would hang out here and that Thea would too and drag Roy along.”

“What about you?” Dig questioned.

Felicity shrugged, “No one cares about my movements.” She missed everyone frowning in disagreement. “And I got you this sweet, new flatscreen and sound system. Now can we talk about logistics here? Or do we want to wait till Oliver and Roy are done playing hide and seek?”

Without waiting for a response, Felicity tossed a remote to Thea, who snagged it mid-air and clicked the screen on. “Okay, so, Stevenson Nathaniel Farnsworth the Fifth,” Thea mocked his name with a haughty accent. “One of HIVE’s benefactors, and the last person on the planet–maybe literally–willing to give Darhk money. Farnsworth is having his annual Save the Planet benefit gala in Gotham this weekend. What everyone attending doesn’t know is that when Farnsworth says “Save the Planet”, what he really means is, “Let’s give Darhk billions of dollars to fund his crusade for nuclear annihilation while he hides underground with the mole people.” And unfortunately for Darhk, he’s finally realized that killing your donors doesn’t actually give you access to their off-shore bank accounts. So, crazy pants, along with his wife and possibly daughter, have to show up to schmooze Farnsworth, or else their secret underground bunker is dead in the water. Darhk’s also having to go unarmed and with minimal security per the rules of the gala, and also because he can’t be trusted to not kill Farnsworth if the man annoys him by breathing loudly.”

“Oliver, Dig, and I will be attending as ourselves. Roy will be wait staff–need to do something about your jawline, babe. Felicity, you’re our eyes outside.” The team nodded in acknowledgment as Thea pulled up a blueprint of the gala location.

“We’re running a twist on the Fiddle Game, the bunker and Dig being the fiddle. Ollie, you’re the inside man; you’ll approach Farnsworth with what we know about Darhk’s plan and that Dig has military access to an existing bunker that can withstand it. Offer to sell him a place for millions, but less than what Darhk needs. I’ll be the outside man; it was my idea to use Dig’s connections and now Ollie’s getting the credit because he has access to his trust and can fund it. I’ll offer him a spot for cheap, so long as he provides me with a little monthly allowance until doomsday. Felicity, you might need to come up with something to back what we’re selling. Roy, you’ll float and keep Darhk away until we’re ready. The objective is to get Farnsworth and Darhk angry and suspicious enough to call HIVE because these trust fund babies and a former military officer are running around trying to cash in on their super secret plan for world domination.”

With a sly nod to Felicity, the blonde jumped in. “All of HIVE’s communications have been on an internal network that, in summary, I cannot access ever without being there. Think Merlyn’s servers back when. Except this time access is only available when there’s a live transmission. One of you needs to tail Farnsworth to the call location; he’s commandeered an internal office at the Museum of Modern Art for “security” operations. Once he’s connected, plug me in—I mean, the flashdrive—and I’ll broadcast it globally. While I’m in there, I might as well plant a virus to dismantle any computer systems they’re using to keep their bunker running. Oh and, Dig, I don’t have time to simultaneously hack ARGUS, so I need you to convince Lyla to give me access to a satellite for the broadcast. If all goes according to plan, the world will know there’s crazy madman trying to blow up the planet, and no one will know about our involvement.”

“And the student has become the master.” Thea issued a deep bow in Dig’s direction.

Dig couldn’t help but chuckle, even as Oliver looked vaguely terrified. “Then it’s your line, Ms. Queen.”

“Let’s go steal a plot for nuclear annihilation and world domination.”

* * *

 

Watching Thea walk through their most high stakes plan yet–because this wasn’t just Starling City but the entire world at stake–was both exhilariating and horrifying. Oliver was equal warring parts proud of the determined and selfless woman she had become from a trustafarian with an attitude problem and horrified that he had involved her in this world.

When Dig had approached them about setting up a team beyond the three of them, Oliver, in contrast to Felicity’s enthusiastic acceptance, had reluctantly agreed. It was clear the mission to save Starling City was going to require more than him punching every corrupt one-percenter in the face until they gave up and was expanding in scope beyond even their capabilities. He just hadn’t expected Dig to suggest Thea (“She’s the only other person you trust, Oliver, and I’m pretty sure you two are cut from the same cloth when it comes to wanting to help people.”) and her boyfriend Roy (“He’s already a petty criminal with a Robin Hood complex, just needs a little training.”)

Thea had slotted into the team in the unofficial grifter role, having been born and bred with and then trained in the ability to adapt and flatter. Roy, after a little coaching, functioned as their thief because no one ever expected Thea Queen’s boyfriend to be well-versed in the skills of pickpocketing and safe-breaking, even if he did grow up in the Glades. Felicity continued to perform her technological magic from afar–where Oliver preferred to keep her–walking them safely through the jobs and creating evidence trails for the marks’ ultimate arrests. Dig was their genius tactician—because not even five years of survival skills could trump a nearly lifelong military career, although Oliver reserved the right to improvise when necessary—capable of understanding and maximizing everyone’s individual skillset for the job at hand.

For the past two years, they had thwarted plots to ruin Starling City, using not just his physical prowess but a combination of amateur sleuthing, corporate espionage, subtle conning, and outright bravado. Most of their marks never saw the end coming, thinking they were engaging in legitimate business with the Queens and waking up to the FBI knocking down their front door. The only deviations had been Malcolm Merlyn and Slade Wilson, who’d been prepared to destroy the city by any—especially the most violent—means possible. If they’d had to frame murderous criminals for crimes before they could be committed, no one was losing sleep over it.

Still, this was their biggest job yet–hopefully ever–and it all hinged on unhinging a paranoid billionaire and exposing the evil plot to the rest of the world, who would hopefully care enough to shut it down. 

* * *

 

Everything was going according to plan until it really, _really_ wasn’t.

Dig was playing the part of a jaded former military officer, more interested in saving his own ass than his sworn duty; Oliver, the loud-mouthed playboy, too dumb to recognize the gold mine he was sitting on; Thea, the bitter younger sister, eager to undercut her undeserving brother. Farnsworth had bought the fiddle, hook, line and sinker. Except when he went to confront Darhk–already aggravated by waiter!Roy “spilling” a drink on him to distract him from Thea’s conversation with Farnsworth–the serial killer with delusions of grandeur had, to be blunt, lost his shit.

Instead of sneaking away to call HIVE, Darhk had grabbed Farnsworth by the throat and slammed him against the nearest pillar—in front of hundreds of Gotham’s elite. Dig and Thea were snatched by Darhk’s “security detail” and hauled over to the feuding men for a reckoning, while Roy struggled to reach the second floor. He needed a decent angle to place the pinhole camera Felicity had equipped them all with, and he was never going to find one in the panicking crowd. Too soon, Darhk realized that Farnsworth was also wheezing out _Oliver Queen_  from around the death grip on his throat, and when Oliver didn’t materialize after Darhk called him out, his men started dropping bodies, creating even more panic and mayhem.

When the chaos had started breaking out, Felicity made an executive decision and snagged her tablet and the emergency bag before leaving the safety of the van and sprinting for the nearest employee entrance. Within minutes, she hacked the access code and met up with Oliver, in possession of a security card Roy had lifted earlier from one of Farnsworth’s men and passed along, and they hustled to Farnsworth’s interior office. Oliver had incapacitated the guards in moments, but Felicity was taking longer to crack the encryption, especially since she was simultaneously walking Roy through syncing his camera and cell phone to ARGUS’s satellite for the live broadcast.

Once she busted through the firewalls to the real guts, Felicity started a dump of all of HIVE’s files onto the great world wide web, where the Internet would never forget. Fortunately, this was also about the time that the ARGUS agents on standby—because Lyla preferred her husband alive—managed to infiltrate the gala and start containment. Dig, Thea, and Roy blended into the escaping crowd momentarily before pushing into the internal hallways to find Felicity and Oliver. She directed them through the bowels of the museum, magically opening locked doors, until they crashed into the room, diving into the street clothes she had brought them. While they hurriedly changed, Felicity erased any record of their presence from the security cameras and attendance logs, and an already-dressed Oliver secured the awakening guards.

Unfortunately, some of Darhk’s men also blended into the crowd and slipped ARGUS and were now well on their way to tracking down the team. So everyone grabbed their shit and fled the premises, followed closely by the remaining thugs.

* * *

 

“Look, I’m sorry I hit the wrong sequence to open that door but I fixed it a second later. You wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t said anything.” Felicity sighed, once again regretting her mouth’s inability to stop talking.

After scrambling into the van, Thea living up to her childhood nickname and beating them all to jump in the driver’s seat, everyone had been riding a high, loudly talking a mile a minute over each other. Once they quieted down, Felicity quickly went over their alibis for the night since she “fixed” the security camera footage: after his business meeting, Oliver hadn’t been feeling well and hadn’t attended, so neither had Dig, and Thea and Roy’s plane didn’t land until well after the gala started, per the “corrected” flight manifest. Thankfully, not many people in Gotham would recognize them, and any allegations could be chalked up to adrenaline and the ravings of a delusional madman desperate for a scapegoat—not that ARGUS believed in trials and witnesses. Then she’d made the fatal error of mentioning her slip up in releasing the electronic locks while Oliver was changing into his street clothes.

Dig shot her a concerned look. “Still. It’s not good for you to be distracted when you’re in the field, Felicity.”

“I don’t really think it’s going to be an issue much longer, Dig,” she sighed with a meaningful look. “And you’d be distracted, too, if people wandered around your workspace topless.”

“Topless? Who was topless? Unless you’re talking about Oliver again, then I don’t want to know,” Thea interjected from up in the driver seat. “Brace!” she barely got the warning out before jerking the van around a sharp corner, sending everyone ricocheting off the interior. 

Being the one who whacked his head on the passenger door, Roy was particularly disgruntled. “Watch the road! Who the hell taught you to drive? Oliver?”

“I meant shirtless. Why are there even different adjectives for that? How come women are topless and men are shirtless? Is there even a practical reason? Words are weird.” Felicity’s babble ended in a grunt when a bundled rope fell off a shelf and landed on her head.

The man across from her winced apologetically but made no move to clothe himself. He’d gotten blood on the street clothes he’d originally changed into and needed to replace them, but couldn’t make a move without Thea's driving jostling him all over the back of the van. With their luck today, he’d end up falling into Felicity’s lap, and now wasn't the time for that.

“Seriously, put a shirt on!” Felicity grumbled. “Oh. Well, I guess that’s the difference then. Men wear shirts, not tops.”

“What?” Thea yelled back. “I can’t hear you guys! Is this important?”

“Are Blondie’s babbles ever important? What’s important is you not killing us when we’re trying to get away from the biggest job we’ve ever pulled!” Recognizing that Roy was on his way to bursting a vein, Thea patted his leg comfortingly and focused on the road and losing their tail.

Ten minutes later, the passengers let out a disgruntled “ _Thea!”_ when they jolted to a sudden stop.

“What? We’re here.” They stared blankly at her until registering the four nondescript cars waiting on the other side of the front windshield. “Here being the coordinates Felicity programmed.”

Felicity looked down to double-check her tablet. “Oh, right. That’s my cue. Everyone, out!”

* * *

 

“What are we doing here?” Oliver sounded almost angry, and Felicity had a feeling he knew what was coming.

Before she could bite the bullet, Dig jumped in, “What we agreed to do when we started this whole thing. We’ve taken down Malcolm, Slade, Darhk. There aren’t any big bads left, and the longer we stick together, the bigger the target we’re painting on our backs. It’s a good time to move on.”

The team was silent a moment, processing Dig’s words before Felicity spoke up. “I funded the bank accounts, and everyone has clean paperwork and flights out of here. I split us up so it wouldn’t be obvious. Oliver, you’re straight back to Starling. Thea and Roy, you’ll be on vacation for a few weeks before going back.” She couldn’t help the envious pangs when the young couple exchanged pleased smiles. “Dig, I set you up as close to Lyla’s last known location as I could get. I’ll be going somewhere... else.”

Reluctantly, everyone reached for the designated manila envelopes she was holding out.

After a round of hugs, Roy and Thea headed for the first car. Trailing behind, the original trio split up to take the remaining cars.

“We made a difference. Remember that, hold onto it.” With those profound words and a fond, if not slightly exasperated, smile, Dig climbed into his car and drove away.

When it became clear that Oliver was just going to stare broodily at his car key and not acknowledge her, Felicity yanked the door open and clamored in.

“Where are you going?”

She jumped instinctively, not knowing how he moved quickly enough to go from the other side of the car to next to her open door. “Let’s see how hard you look.” Felicity flashed him an infuriating smile before slamming the door shut and speeding off.

* * *

 

“You didn’t make it very hard to find you.”

Somehow, she still startled at the sudden voice in her ear even though she’d been expecting it for days. “Clearly I did or else you would have been here last week.”

Oliver had the good sense to look ashamed. “Sorry. Thea had to talk some sense in me.”

“And Roy obliquely challenged your manhood and Dig coerced you into a heart-to-heart.” Felicity filled in, both from Thea’s sporadic updates and knowing him too well. “You’re lucky I waited here this long. I could have packed up and gone halfway around the world.”

“You could’ve,” he acknowledged with a tight smile. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Oliver took it slow: leaning in by millimeters, brushing his nose against hers, pausing a moment to share a breath and ensure that she wasn’t going to push him away. After all, he would have deserved it–to be denied _them_ –after dragging her into his vendetta and making her complicit in his crimes. 

Growling a string of curses under her breath, Felicity fisted the material of his shirt collar and yanked his mouth the scant distance to hers.


End file.
